wally

Wally started at Bickershaw Festival in '72. A bunch of us went there with a large tent, and arranged there would be one cook. He agreed, on condition he cooked only when bands he didn't like were on.

Between bands there were circus acts, wirewalking etc, and a guy jumped into a 'barrel', actually a huge pool, which promptly burst, spilling gallons of water at the front of the stage, after it had been raining all night. Nobody wanted to stand there afterwards, except a Scottish lad called Wullie from our tent, who always went everywhere in his bare feet anyway. So...

A boring band would come on, Joe would start cooking, and we'd shout down to the front for Wullie when it was chow time. It was a 3-day festival, and after a while Wullie mentioned that lots of people were calling him, not just us. Some people wrongly made the connection between the boring bands and the call "Wullie ", which is Wally to English ears...

At another festival later, the NME did a review mentioning "and the hippies shouted at the bad acts, calling them wallies", and another word was born.

I've told everybody this true story for 30-odd years and if you don't believe it, you're a wally.

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